Alia Bhatt in ‘Alpha’
| Photo Credit: YRF Studios
The YRF Spy Universe is running out of breathing room. What started as a focused story about one legendary agent has morphed into a crowded superhero-style playground where every major Bollywood star needs their own badge. After much delay, this week, Alia Bhatt jumps into the fray to bring some gender parity to a world ruled by men for over a decade. Traditionally, in spy movies, female characters were usually romantic interests, sidekicks, or spies who still needed the male hero to handle the big boss.Here, Alia is Alpha unto herself, not standing in anyone’s shadow. She is the central anchor of the mission, seeking to carry a massive, high-budget action franchise completely on her own shoulders. The actor doesn’t cut any corners for the physical and visual transformation required for the part of a trained, genetically altered operative.Most action stars lock their faces into a blank, tough-guy stare when they fight. Alia does the exact opposite. She uses her expressive face to tell the story of the fight, making every punch and kick feel deeply personal. Almost like abhinaya in a classical dance presentation, she injects a wicked sense of personality in Sita, a blend of snark and sass to hide the emotional vulnerability of an orphan deep down, but leaving the door a little open so that we can feel the cracks in her armour. Just as Satya in Jigra is an isolated survivor stripped of her safety net, Sita is an isolated survivor, but Alia brings the confidence of a predator to Sita. If Satya was blank, almost on the verge of crumbling, here her glares and smirks make you feel that she is in complete control of the chaos.Alpha (Hindi)Director: Shiv RawailDuration: 140 minutesCast: Alia Bhatt. Sharvari, Bobby Deol, Anil Kapoor, Dia MirzaSynopsis: A genetically altered agent must fight for survival after she discovers the true identity of her rogue mentor.However, intentions aside, the problem is that there is hardly any freshness in the story, and Alia struggles to keep it from feeling like a comic strip spread over two hours. Writers Uday Chopra, Shridhar Raghavan, and Ishita Moitra blend ancient Indian mythology with Marvel flicks, but it ultimately feels like an unoriginal mashup. A jingoistic man in uniform, Fateh (Bobby Deol), launches a secret plan to create super soldiers with the help of a doctor (Dibyendu Bhattacharya) by injecting a serum that he named Alpha. Perhaps, he picked a vial from the sets of Animal!
